For Love of the Game Read Online Free PDF Page A

stately blonde on the far side of the room, one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen, lighted up the magic lantern—what poem was that?—and they were tokid about that sight across the room, the “crowded room,” one night while watching
South Pacific
on the late movie: “Some enchanted evening, you will see a stran-gerrr across a crrrrowded room. And somehow you know, you know even then—” And by God, it was true. She met what she called “the great one.” Not long after that one All-Star Game where he struck out the side with the bases loaded in that one great inning which made him as much of a celebrity as he was ever to be, and so she met him knowing that. She had never known ballplayers. Not the type. She was an educated, beautiful woman in the publishing business who had traveled widely overseas and spoke several languages, and who had married a rich and mean bastard and managed to stay married in pain for almost ten years and was now divorced, at that party perfectly, permanently free, and more or less permanently drunk. But drunk or not, witty and educated and cocky or not, she was genuinely funny. She laughed him into the wall. He began to have good moments with her—he saw them in her eyes. He saw the eyes lighten, sparkle, beautiful, steamy eyes. He remembered suggesting that he go find the ex-husband and “lean on him.” They went out and talked and went to bed and she passed out. He was odd in the morning, woke up looking down at her and feeling somewhat eerie. When she awoke she was—different. He was sorry she had been so mechanical. Lay there. So warm,so chilly. There was a new thing in her eyes that morning, someone sober looking at him who he did not understand at all. He remembered her sudden voice: “I won’t do it again. I promise.”
    “Do what?”
    “Fuck.”
    “What?”
    “No. Too … casual. Sorry. Won’t do that again.”
    “What, never?”
    “Well.” Smile began again. “Well, hardly ever.”
    Then she said: “Let’s you and I … have fun. Together. I promise to be good to you. You’re a good man, Chappie. You’re just … a straight shooter. From the hip. Honest as a boy. I want to help you enjoy life a little. And you, me. You didn’t really want me to fuck like that last night … because we didn’t really know each other yet and it was too soon. I won’t do that again. Please don’t hold it against me.”
    He didn’t hold it against her. They spent that day together. They sat and walked and talked all day and into the night. About marriage—hers—and death and God and school and baseball games and music. They went out that night and danced—
that
was a thing at which she was superb and he was not, and so she started to teach him, and she had real talent as a teacher, but he didn’t as a dancer, and then he took her back to her apartment very late, almost dawn, and she did not evenkiss him good night. She saluted him, as the lieutenant to the captain. Then she was gone. And from then on they saw each other every day he was in town … the ballplayer—she had never known an athlete of any kind at all and she was fascinated by the way he talked about it, living it with him. Then he left. And called when his team was back. And she was present in a splendid glow, and it was all very clear: they stopped seeing other people. She met him where he was playing in other towns: still didn’t go to bed. Didn’t talk about it. He played down in Atlanta and she came to stay with him for a week, and the right night came, and he felt the gigantic need and she opened, and it was in that enormously personal way different than it had ever been with anyone else, however much joy there had been in bed, where there had always been joy. From then on they bedded down as extraordinary adventurers, differently every time, in so many ways that for a short while it was a wild new game to two talented athletes, and then that passed and tenderness came, and they held